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Imperersonality In T. S. Eliot's Modern Poetry

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ELIOT 'S MODERNISM ' ' A VOYAGE FROM PAST TO PRESENT ' ': T. S. Eliot 's poetry sheds light on the modernist literature and determines the framework of the modern poetry through a plenty of innovative techniques. Principally, impersonality roots in Eliot 's poetry; which means an escape from personality and emotions (Underhill 170). His theory of impersonality in poetry is a strategy of avoiding confession (191). Ackerly draws attention to Eliot 's poetry 's paradoxical condition by claiming that his verse encapsulates the most harrowing personal feelings and presents the most agonizing image of the individual mind in spite of his insistence on impersonality (Ackerly 8). It can be said that his theory of the impersonal nature of art is …show more content…

In addition, the atmosphere of death is formed through the literary allusions to great extent in this stanza. The first line is adapted from “To His Coy Mistress” by Andrew Marvell and interpenetrated with the gloomy atmosphere of the wasteland in a sharp contrast (Rainey 185). The ugliness, dullness and torpidness of the river does not match up with the “Sweet Thames” of Spenser’s time. The only sound heard is the rattle of the bones and the only alive thing is the rat in the wasteland whereas the sound of chariots comes to the ear in Marvell 's poem. On the basis of the legend of The Fisher King, the narrator personalizes himself with The Fisher King and labels the modern world as a decaying hell. As believed, the Fisher King, last protector of the Holy Grail, becomes impotent and it makes the next generation to carry on after his death impossible (105-106). His impotence is vital enough to cause the infertility of the land and turn it into a wasteland. Forthwith, his kingdom suffers from the curse. He looks forward to someone who is able to heal him by the means of magic while fishing in the river; nonetheless, only the chosen one can accomplish it. In this regard, fish is associated with the fertility by Eliot. Then the poem is switched to another literary work of Shakespeare ' ' The Tempest ' ' in which Ferdinand is thinking of his dead father, the King Alonso, in company with Ariel’s music: “Sitting on a bank,/Weeping again the king my father’s wrack.” (Rainey 103) The mood of the poem shifts from gloominess to sexuality once more towards the end of this stanza: /The sound of horns and motors, which shall bring / Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring. / O the moon shone bright on Mrs. Porter And on her daughter/. These lines carry a phallic implication of upcoming sexuality with the

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